Acehnese in land document rush
Nani Afrida, The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh
Rudy, a Banda Aceh resident, breathes a sigh of relief. He has just acquired a document that substitutes for his land title certificate that was lost as a result of the tsunami on Dec. 26 last year. For Rudy, the substitute land title certificate is very important, as it is all his family has left. The family's house was leveled by the disaster.
"The land is the only part of our family's legacy that is left. I have lost my parents, so now I have to take care of their lands by myself," said 33-year-old Rudy.
Rudy says he did not experience any difficulties in obtaining the substitute land title certificate from the local office of the National Land Agency (BPN). The only thing that annoyed him were the long queues, as many other people were in the same situation as Rudy.
Rudy explained that in order to get the substitute certificate, he had to show BPN officials the exact location of his land. The official saves the data in the computer system, and then takes Rudy's phone number. "The BPN official will call me when they are ready to survey the land in my neighborhood." Rudy said that he had not spent a single penny to have his claim processed.
Rudy is not alone. Razali Yahya, head of Aceh's BPN office, said that to date almost 2,500 Banda Aceh residents had reported the loss of their land title certificates.
The problem is particularly complex because the BPN office was also devastated by the tsunami, and many land ownership documents kept in the office were destroyed or severely water damaged.
In order to save important documents, BPN officials recently transported some 60,000 damaged land certificates to Jakarta. In Jakarta, the certificates will be restored and preserved.
Similar measures will also be taken for land documents that were water damaged in the west coast city of Meulaboh.
"There are many certificates that got stuck together after getting wet from the tsunami. BPN's Jakarta office has techniques to restore the documents," said Razali.
He said that BPN in Jakarta was now working with a Japanese non-governmental organization in order to make the preservation efforts a success. He said that the Banda Aceh office has been assisted by the Office of the Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare, which provided a Hercules transport aircraft, allowing BPN to move nine tons of land title documents to Jakarta. The 60,000 documents represent 90 percent of all land documents that could be saved after the tsunami disaster. The other 10 percent have been totally destroyed or gone missing, meaning the office will have to produce new land title documents.